It’s been about a year since my awesome Egypt vacation – one of the best, most memorable trips I’ve even taken. After I got back home, I made a list of blog topics to write about, and one somehow slipped through the cracks. It’s a topic I researched online prior to my trip and never got a satisfactory answer to:
Is it socially okay for male tourists to wear shorts in Egypt?
I’m a big shorts guy. I live in the hot & humid southern United States, so everyone here wears shorts for most of the year. Whenever I travel, I prefer shorts to jeans because we’re usually in warm climates and shorts are much easier to sink wash than long pants.
But I realize that other cultures are different, and since I already stick out like a sore thumb wherever I go, I don’t want to make the problem worse by offending the locals with my bare leg skin.
It turned out that shorts were not a problem in most of Egypt. Tourists wore them everywhere and I never noticed any dirty looks. The only exception is in mosques where long pants and a top that covers the shoulders are required for entry. But other than that, shorts were fine and I could have worn them much more frequently during the day than I actually did. I even asked our local tour guide about this subject, and he concurred with my observations.
So if you’re heading over to Egypt anytime soon, be aware that shorts are fine to wear. Take long pants for the mosque tours, but otherwise you’re good to go.
Lite Adventurer 